A Closer Look - Inside

On the inside, the Montech Air 100 ARGB sports a traditional layout with a steel shroud to cover the PSU bay as well as 3.5" drive cage. You could mount two fans here or opt for two 2.5" hard-drive trays on the shroud to show off your drives. Montech has also included a hole through which you may route graphics card PCIe cables, and a gap in the front allows for those larger radiators.


Turning the case over, three basic Velcro strips with Montech branding hold the wires, which come essentially pre-routed out of the box. This is also rather unusual for a budget chassis.


As the Air 100 ARGB is of lower height, there is not enough space to place two 2.5" cages upright like you would often see in ATX enclosures. Instead, Montech has placed them separately around the CPU cooler backplate opening, making excellent use of the available area. A basic 4-port ARGB controller is built-in and pre-wired as well. But as you can see, one of the four connections for the fans has come off the controller. You may opt for motherboard control or use the reset cable wire to toggle through the various illumination modes with the unlabeled button in the chassis top.


Under the shroud in the front is a removable 3.5" hard-drive cage that may hold an additional 2.5 or 3.5" drive on top of the cage. This brings the total number of storage drives to a good four, which is enough for the target audience of the Air 100 ARGB. In the very top, you can see the three 120 mm fans with translucent blades and hub-equipped ARGB lighting.


In the rear, the PSU bay is standard-fare, employing four foam knobs for your power supply to rest upon. There is ample space for a mainstream unit with the HDD cage in its forward position, but things will get pretty tight if you need to move the storage box away to make room for liquid-cooling setups in the front of the Air 100 ARGB. Above that, you will find the four expansion slots and break-out covers, as well as another 120 mm ARGB fan. Interestingly enough, all these fans come with holes in the black frames, which seems to defeat the purpose of funneling air properly.


Looking at the ceiling with the magnetic dust filter applied, you can clearly see where the holes to mount fans or the radiator are placed. If Montech would have placed the mesh cover on top like most other brands, none of this would have been necessary, and the end result would have been cleaner, too.


All cables within the Air 100 ARGB are sleeved black and of the default variety. While some cases employ flat USB 3.0 I/O cables, these are classic round ones.